The broadly similar declines in both chambers conceal several notable differences between the House and Senate and their two parties table 1. In the House, both conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have seen their ranks gradually thin since the early s.
But the conservative Democratic faction has consistently been larger than the moderate wing of the Republican conference since the late s. Today conservative Democrats in the House still outnumber moderate Republicans three to one. Smith In the Senate, centrists of both parties actually increased sporadically from the mids to the mids before starting to decline during the late s. But the most striking development in the Senate has been the depletion of conservative Democrats, whose numbers made up nearly a quarter of Senate Democrats during the late s but in recent years claim only a handful.
Sarah A. As it turns out, the retirement of conservative Democrats in the House is nothing new. But though conservative Democrats retired at very high rates during the s, their contingent shrank only incrementally, suggesting that retiring conservative Democrats tended to be replaced by like-minded lawmakers.
Southern voters instead are electing conservative Republicans. Out of step with their more liberal colleagues, often unable to swallow the policy prescriptions of the new Republican majority, and facing voters who now prefer conservative Republicans to themselves, House Democratic conservatives save those who jumped ship and switched to the Republican party have little incentive to stay in the House.
Unfortunately, the current political climate has rendered this approach ineffective. Unlike their Democratic colleagues, moderate House Republicans have shown little distinctive inclination to retire, either now or in the past. Only in did moderates stand out in the roster of retiring Republicans. The steady decline of moderate Republicans since the early s suggests that electoral defeat and replacement by more conservative Republicans, not retirement, has been at work.
Although moderate Republicans make up less than 10 percent of the House Republican conference, they are not showing their discouragement by retiring. That has changed. In the Senate, most retirements among centrists are by Republicans, not Democrats. In fact the thinning of conservative Democratic ranks does not appear to have been driven by voluntary retirements. Although many conservative Democrats retired in , , and , their numbers remained steady or actually increased slightly after each of those elections.
The abrupt drop in the number of conservative Senate Democrats in recent years appears to be, again, more the result of the emergence of a conservative Republican electorate in the South than of voluntary retirements. To be sure, over time these two forces are likely to complement each other: as conservative Democrats are replaced by Republicans or in some cases by liberal Democrats, the more isolated their remaining political soulmates likely feel and the more likely they are to retire.
Among Senate Republicans, the retirement of moderates has only lately begun taking its toll on the dwindling center. The gradual rightward shift of Senate Republicans in the past, it seems, has primarily been driven by election results, not voluntary retirements. This year is an important exception, as Republican moderates are calling it quits before testing the electoral waters. The shrinking political center has left Congress increasingly polarized figure 2. Democrats are perched on the left, Republicans on the right, in both the House and the Senate as the ideological centers of the two parties have moved markedly apart.
Monday marks the first night of the Republican National Convention, and things could certainly be going better for President Trump. He is trailing Joe Biden in the national polls as well as in several key swing states. In fact, circumstances seem so dire for the GOP that election handicappers like the Cook Political Report think the Democrats — once underdogs — are slightly favored to take back the GOP-controlled Senate , too.
So if Republicans were to lose on that scale — the House, the Senate and the presidency — that raises the question: Would the GOP change course? The problem is that political parties are not singular entities capable of easily changing course. They are, instead, a loose coalition of office-holders, interest groups, donors, activists, media personalities and many others, all jockeying and competing for power.
Think of a giant tug of war in which all the tugs have been toward more extreme and more confrontational versions of the party. And all that momentum in the Republican party is pulling toward a more confrontational, Trumpian direction — even if he is no longer at the helm. The takeaway was clear.
The fortunes of those who were the most solidly aligned with Trump Bacon listed Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Tom Cotton and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley were rising within the party, while the fortunes of the so-called Trump skeptics were falling. Some, like Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, have left the party. Others, like Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, are retiring. And then there are the anti-Trumpers, like former Ohio Gov.
They are the latest iteration of a decades-long transformation of the GOP. In short, moderates have been bowing out. And more conservative , more combative , more evangelical , and now more Trumpian Republicans have been stepping up. The same could happen again in As political scientist Danielle Thomsen has shown, more and more would-be moderates are opting out of Congress altogether , choosing not to run because they no longer see a place for themselves.
This is true in both parties, Thomsen found — but especially among Republicans. And that feeling of not belonging may stem in part from party leaders and party activists who want more extreme candidates to run.
It also helps that more partisan candidates are the ones who are naturally drawn to politics. In a survey of party chairs at the county-level or equivalent branch of government in — well before Trump became president — local party leaders said they preferred more extreme candidates to more centrist candidates.
This finding was true especially among Republicans, who preferred extreme candidates by a to-1 margin. Democrats preferred more extreme candidates just 2 to 1. If anything, this ratio may be even more lopsided among Republicans. But considering that the overwhelming majority of legislative elections are now safe for one party , most parties can win regardless of who they nominate. These patterns are all part of a vicious cycle that has been feeding on itself for decades.
The more extreme the Republican Party has become, the more moderates have opted out or just been passed over. The more moderates have opted out or been passed over, the more extreme the party has become. And the more the Republican Party recedes to just elected officials in solidly conservative states and districts, the more they define the party.
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